Forge
by the anomaly
Summary: "A throne, a crown prince, a line of kings." An exploration of brotherhood and birthrights. Warnings: Battle of Five Armies, canonical character death.


_Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making money from this._

* * *

_sunt lacrimæ rerum  
(these are the tears of things) - Virgil's _Aeneid

* * *

_binary_

* * *

Kíli's face is a picture of perplexity. His mouth hangs slightly open with the effort as he winds his short, fat fingers into his hair, labouring at his unruly locks and willing them into braids. His best efforts at a piracy of his brother's hair culminate in a lopsided bird's nest atop his head.

Opening the closet door, Fíli nearly stumbles over his younger brother and laughs at his discovery, a short, sweet sound that startles them both, and Kíli is at once proud, embarrassed and blindly happy.

* * *

As they grew up, Kíli continued to shadow his older brother, little arms picking up a wooden sword far too large for his stature in mornings when Fíli was called up for training (and promptly falling over, though always maintaining his dignity throughout the entire process of falling over, how he did so to this day Fíli does not know). This was well before they discovered that his nimble hands and sharp eyes were more suited for the bow and arrow, and Fíli had a hard time explaining to him that having a different weapon of choice from your brother was actually a very good thing.

What brought an end to it all was the day when Kíli had seen Fíli leap from a height and secretly hatched a brilliant idea. He would attempt to do the same by himself the very same afternoon, and show his brother when he had perfected the jump. Having never learnt how to break his fall, he had dived head-first into the ground and thankfully received only a broken arm for his pains.

Back home, Fíli holds him by the shoulders and tries to convey the gravity of the earlier situation, how it could have ended so much worse and Kíli only laughs. It exasperates him further, and he takes to shaking some sense into him, and now the little one is crying in earnest and Fíli remembers his broken arm but can hardly bring himself to be sorry.

What if he had followed blindly and rushed out during an orc-hunt? He could have lost his life, he tells his mother, and a far better souvenir it would have been too, from the looks of it. Fíli's thoughts run through various scenarios, each carrying an outcome more terrible than the one before, if only because he is still young and prone to hyperbole. It hits him harder than he is willing to admit, imagining a future without his brother to share with.

(Later that night Fíli shakes too, under the weight of his own sobs, but no one knows.)

* * *

At his bedside, Fíli launches into a righteous torrent of rhetoric on the danger of imitation, of losing yourself by emulating someone else. About winning others' approval at the price of your own. And so forth. (Kíli drowses under the healer's brew, but something in him calls out to counter Fíli's theory, something about there being no _self_ and _other_ in this case, since there is no boundary between the two he can ever discern.) As he preaches Fíli becomes steadily aware that all this talk is a pitiful cover for his own disgust at himself for being an unworthy role model who had caused the accident in the very first place. In times like these he curses youth, the veneer behind which inadequacy hides and plagues him like a secret wound.

What escaped him at the time was that the greatest gift a brother could give to another was dissociation, however painful, to mark the beginning of a legitimate sense of self free from another's ghosts and insults and desires.

* * *

The summer air hangs still and stifling. Kíli blinks. The dark winks back. He doesn't know why, but Fíli's placidity at the table after that initial outburst makes his chest ache so, even now, _now_, as he absently reaches for his brother and grabs a fistful of bedding instead, pulling it to him and catching nothing but breathing in the warm, quiet night.

* * *

_birthright_

* * *

Thorin scourges every corner of Erabor for the Arkenstone. The halls echo with his fevered footsteps, winding trails that weave in and out of forgotten rooms and double back upon themselves in the dim corridors as Thorin traces and retrace the paths he took as a young prince. They mark a king's rightful claim to his kingdom, a joyous end to their line's exile, even as Fíli notices a wildness in his uncle's eyes of late, and secretly fears it will end in tears.

Thorin's voice brims full of pride as he recounts the stories held in the stones and pillars, deeds of honour and renown cradled in these chambers before Erabor was laid waste. Tales after tales are told as the older dwarves chant and sing of valiant deeds, and like the very craftsmen that they are, embellish the past with images of the bounty that once was. Kíli listens in awe, his heart swelling with each rise and crest of the sonorous melody. Fíli waits for a tingle to run down his spine, for the air to be infused with meaning, yet nothing happens. Unlike that very first night at Bag End, the songs tonight seem to him forced and contrived. He yearns to believe these yarns but for him they are never lifted above vanity, even if he knows they are founded on some semblance of truth. Searching for the metal in his blood that is proof of his royal lineage, he places his palm against the walls and calls out to them as future king and heir apparent, but they are cold and silent.

For Thorin, his destiny is so deeply intertwined in the roots of the Lonely Mountain that to be robbed of its treasures is to deprive him of his person altogether. His true inheritance, however, is beyond Erabor and its gold and jewels. What he truly came into as he stepped into those halls was three generations' worth of vengeance and madness, crouched in the shadows awaiting his arrival.

Fíli recalls how the sun had shone in the dales of Ered Luin, the rocks and boulders casting immense shadows on the grass, dark shapes from which they darted and tumbled on their too-short legs. That was many summers ago. Now that they have arrived at their homeland, it all seems painfully foreign. He tries to summon feelings of fealty and honour for this kingdom that he serves, but the only heirloom he can truly lay claim to is perhaps the ties of kinship between the dwarves and the blood in his veins that chains his brother to himself.

As the night goes on, Thorin speaks of the new life he will build for the dwarves of Erabor. At a time when he should be at his uncle's right hand carving out their collective future, Fíli finds himself sinking further and further into the past, his wayward mind weaving its way back into memories he assumed he'd forgotten. Is this his true inheritance then, these ties to the past? Blurred images of childhood that now seem an age ago start to resurface, beginning with memories of eavesdropping on their mother and uncle's conversations into the early dawn. Most of all he is haunted by Kíli's young eyes (not quite as dark as they have now become) staring up at him, asking, "Where papa?", and though the grief in his heart was still fresh he had held his brother and rocked him late into the night, singing songs of journeys to strange, distant lands beneath the solitary stars. And still the little dwarf did not sleep.

So Fíli did what they both loved best. He willed his voice to go as low and deep as he could as he half-sang, half-chanted the song of the Lonely Mountain that they have so often heard their uncle sing to them when he thinks they are asleep, and only then does Kíli's eyelids begin to droop, his little hands falling away from his brother's shirtsleeves as sleep finally takes him.

* * *

Kíli seldom sings. He is so conscious of being out of tune that it pains him. As a result, he prefers the harp, or the fiddle, but most of all his brother's voice, not quite as low as their uncle's but still deep and searching, as though they have both lost some infinite thing.

The pillars whisper to him, here. Their speech is of blood and fire and ancient longing (for what?, he wonders) and he thinks of the silence that had greeted him in the dales of Ered Luin when his brother (still young and quite unsubtle) had asked, incredulous, can you not hear them?, and he had shook his head, despondent, compared to the general clamour for attention issuing forth from these columns of stone. He's just about to ask his brother about the whispers and words that he cannot quite understand, but he sees that Fíli's brow is creased with worry and decides otherwise. He muses, mountains may fall, lovers leave and gems grow dim, but a brother, nay, an _elder_ brother, now, that's something else altogether.

"Sing us something, brother,"

"What," he scoffs, "need a lullaby to fall asleep, do we," and receives a cuff upside the head.

Fíli sighs. There will be no sleep tonight. He lies back, eyes moving down from the ceiling's intricate carvings that tell of battles and brave deeds to the rhythmic rise and fall of Kíli's chest. The air is restless with imminent battle. Minutes wear on in silence but Kíli does not make his request again, lost in his own thoughts.

Fíli does sing, in the end, although it's more of an uncanny humming than a song, empty and tuneless in the dark.

* * *

_battle_

* * *

Morning marked the arrival of Dáin and his people, whose grim faces barely registered the sight of the Mountain and its treasures. As the army assembled, Thorin exchanged proud, vacant words with his kinsman, who nodded gravely. The dwarves, girt in mail and armed, looked fresh and ready for battle despite their long journey.

Fíli takes in all of this, weighing the odds of the battle in his mind as he tries to justify war with a quarrel over jewels and gold. He swears under his breath and reminds himself that this is Erabor, this is _home_, but in sooth the Mountain till today is just another story. The Arkenstone has demeaned the leaders of Elves and Dwarves into hagglers at a marketplace. Proud as he is to stand beside his uncle and die for his cause, Fíli scorns the motive of it. Loyalty, honour, what was it, a willing heart; all belied an insatiable avarice that was to be the downfall of them all. The armour that bears the family crest lies on a chair. He makes to pick it up, but his fingers dally, shaking slightly.

Just then, his brother stumbles in, and it hits him, how young Kíli is, how startling beautiful, a thought which has not beset him for quite a while now revisiting him at the brink of battle.

"Brother, uncle means to present us to— why, you're not yet half-dressed!"

He clears his throat.

"Is anything the matter?" Kíli frowns, still looking every inch of the dashing prince that he was born to be.

Fíli shakes his head and resumes his preparations. "And where is Thorin? We should hurry, lest–"

"Brother," Kíli persists, and Fíli can feel the weight of his brother's hands on his shoulders as he turns.

And he sees the soft profile of Kíli's nose dawning upon him as he presses his lips to Fíli's cheek in the chastest of blessings. It is far from the clumsy, careless kisses they shared as boys that brought frowns to the corners of their mother's eyes , yet something childlike remains about it, an air of youthful innocence perhaps, underscoring a gesture Kíli hopes is princely and befitting of a subject to his lord. Fíli receives it with a slight tilt of his face, and what little light there is in the chamber plays upon his golden hair so that he appears regal without condescension, kingly almost, in this newfound serenity. He does not smile. Then Kíli jumps back grinning and the moment is gone and Fíli's hands fumble as he fastens his swords. The flames flicker slightly, although there is no wind. A throne, a crown prince, a line of kings.

And this is the way it has always been.

* * *

There is nothing glorious about dying in battle.

Actually, there is nothing glorious about dying at all, Kíli finds, from the screams and cries that threaten to submerge him as he swings his sword wildly about in crazed half-circles the way one wields a sickle at harvest, bringing up the tally of the dead. Descended from a race of miners and smiths, it is a metaphor that he understands vaguely at best. His quiver is empty; his arrows spent. A gash across his face burns but there is no way he can pause and lift his hand to it. There is not even time for pity as he steps over the fallen, tripping over legs and arms and _beards_, oh Mahal, hacking at the orcs around him. Kíli fights, technique forgotten and grace thrown to the wind, and for the first time he entertains the thought that they may not get out of this alive.

Mid-battle, he spots Fíli by way of his light hair, and sees an orc stealing up to him. He calls out, "Brother!", and though it is a term shared by far too many, Fíli catches a wisp of his own name in it and turns, just in time, to slay the orc.

* * *

He cries, "To the king!" and the dwarves rally with a shout even as they fall back to their leader and the orcs close in. Fíli cannot see his uncle; only flashes of Orcrist as it swings and slashes. He turns, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother in the swarming mess, and that is when cold metal winds its way into his back at the same time something dull collides with his chest and knocks the breath out of him.

He cries out, more from shock than pain and thinks, _what?_, then _no_, _not yet_, and another blow hits him in the face and he falls to his knees, _not now_. His hands, badly bruised, rest palms facing the ground; he cannot find his swords. The front of his mail is dark and wet.

Fíli swallows hard. He manages to get to his feet, to stumble the last few steps to his uncle, where he takes another blade to the side and falls again, cursing. His vision blurs as the ground threatens to rise up and claim him but he thinks of his brother, his brother, how he must find him, get him to the king, and he turns and sways on unsteady feet, overcome by the thought. It is then that he sees Kíli coming in from the left, his mouth set in a thin line as the orcs fall around him, and he suffers to see a gash across his cheek marring his face, although he must admit it becomes him, and ages him at least ten summers, and how Kíli would laugh to hear that, his brother, and oh of what use are these thoughts now?

Yet his mind runs on. He remembers their mother's tender hands, Kíli's gentle, quick fingers in his hair urging caution and counsel over brute force, and it strikes him that his brother has perhaps started to shed a little of his recklessness. It comforts him now, the way Kíli's mouth had twisted in disapproval when Thorin shot the arrow at the Lakemen's herald and scorned their call for parley. He thinks, _he will make a good king_, but his thoughts leap to Thorin and he is immediately sorry and ashamed. If this is treason he hopes he is forgiven, for there is not much time and he is dying.

But aren't you supposed to taste blood when you die? Is that not what the stories say, about a copper-tinged certainty, no he can't be— and his thoughts are cut short by a violent cough that racks his frame and it hurts, it hurts so bad he wants to weep but still he tastes nothing, absolutely nothing, as his head drops forward and it snaps to black.

* * *

_brother_

* * *

The sun shines bright in Ered Luin. Fíli has his back to the cold forge as he whittles away at the arrow tip in his hand. There are more than a dozen unfinished ones on the table before him but still he takes his time to get each one just perfect, his head inclined ever so slightly to the left as he listens for the sound of footsteps at the door.


End file.
